A strong field is lining up for the inaugural Washington International. Three of the top four FIDE rated players residing in the US will be playing (Kamsky, Gareev, and Onischuk). The current overall field for the tournament includes 8 GMs and 11 IMs. The 9-round tournament will award $17,000 in guaranteed prizes and runs from July 28 till August 1st in Rockville, MD.

Unlike many other tournaments, the tournament will be providing all the equipment for the players and breakfast each morning. The top three boards will be playing on DGT boards and have the games broadcast live at http://washingtoninternationalchess.org. More information and online registration can be found at washingtoninternationalchess.org. The room block deadline is this coming Friday, July 13th. After that date the room rates will go up.

Running concurrently with the Washington International will be the Platonov Memorial Tournament. This is a six-player round robin tournament dedicated to the memory of GM Igor Platonov. The players planning to attend this tournament are GMs Lev Alburt (USA), Boris Gulko(USA), Gregory Kaidanov(USA), Vladimir Malaniuk (Ukraine), Mikhail Gurevich (Turkey), and Adrian Mihalcisin (Slovenia). The tournament will coincide with the release of the new book, Platonov's Academy, by Lev Alburt and Sam Palatnik. All the games from this tournament will also be broadcast live at Platonov Memorial Tournament

On the Friday evening before these two tournaments, July 27th, there will be an opening reception and the Washington International Blitz. This blitz tournament will be a 5/0 FIDE blitz rated tournament and is open to anyone.

These three tournaments are the centerpieces of five tournaments that the Maryland Chess Association will be running over a period of 15 days, the Maryland Chess Summer. It will be preceeded by the US Cadet Championship from July 21 - 24 and followed by the Potomac Open from August 3 - 5. All the tournaments will be at the Rockville Hilton, and all of them will have pairings, standings and live game coverage on mdchess.com and at the above links.